“the Missioner sanctified
   Who thrust his finger in Lord Jesu’s side.”

According to Camoens, while Thorme was preaching to the potent Hindu city Meleapor, in Narsinga land[FN#325] a huge forest tree floated down the Ganges, but all the king’s elephants and all the king’s men were incompetent to haul it ashore.

   “Now was that lumber of such vasty size,
     no jot it moves, however hard they bear;
     when lo! th’ Apostle of Christ’s verities
     wastes in the business less of toil and care: 
     His trailing waistcord to the tree he ties,
     raises and sans an effort hales it where
    A sumptuous Temple he would rear sublime,
    a fit example for all future time.”

This excites the jealousy and hatred of the Brahmins, for

   “There be no hatred fell and fere, and curst
    As by false virtue for true virtue nurst.”

The chief Brahmin then kills his own son, and tries to saddle the crime on Thome, who promptly restores the dead youth to life again and “names the father as the man who slew.”  Ultimately, Thome, who is unable to circumvent the further machinations of his enemies, is pierced to the heart by a spear; and the apostle in glory is thus apostrophised: 

   “Wept Gange and Indus, true Thome! thy fate,
     wept thee whatever lands thy foot had trod;
     yet weep thee more the souls in blissful state
     thou led’st to don the robes of Holy Rood. 
     But angels waiting at the Paradise-gate
     meet thee with smiling faces, hymning God. 
    We pray thee, pray that still vouchsafe thy Lord
    unto thy Lusians His good aid afford.”

In a stanza presented as a footnote and described as “not in Camoens,” Burton gives vent to his own disappointments, and expends a sigh for the fate of his old friend and enemy, John Hanning Speke.  As regards himself, had he not, despite his services to his country, been relegated to a third-rate seaport, where his twenty-nine languages were quite useless, except for fulminating against the government!  The fate of poor Speke had been still more lamentable: 

   “And see you twain from Britain’s foggy shore
     set forth to span dark Africk’s jungle-plain;
     thy furthest fount, O Nilus! they explore,
     and where Zaire springs to seek the Main,
     The Veil of Isis hides thy land no more,
     whose secrets open to the world are lain. 
    They deem, vain fools! to win fair Honour’s prize: 
    This exiled lives, and that untimely dies.”

Burton, however, still nursed the fallacious hope that his merits would in time be recognised, that perhaps he would be re-instated in Damascus or appointed to Ispahan or Constantinople.

99.  At Ober Ammergau, August 1880.